THEY WANTED — AND GOT — A PARK

Chicano Park, born from 1970 protest, placed on National Register of Historic Places

They were there in the beginning, 43 years ago, when the bulldozers were coming.

On a dirt lot in Barrio Logan, underneath the ramps of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, they locked arms to form a human chain and refused to leave for 12 days. They weren’t about to let the earthmovers start work on a highway patrol substation.

“We wanted a park,” said Josephine Talamantez.

A park they got — Chicano Park — and on Friday the old-timers were there again, celebrating its formal recognition as an American treasure. Chicano Park, with its colorful murals, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It joins more than 100 other spots in San Diego County deemed worthy of preservation, including the Hotel del Coronado, the Mission Beach roller coaster, the Star of India and town halls in Ramona and Olivenhain.

At Friday’s celebration, Mayor Bob Filner called the park “world-class” and said it is an enduring symbol of the neighborhood’s history and its aspirations. The event was attended by a few dozen government leaders and community activists, as well as several of the original muralists.

“This is a really, really proud day for all of us,” said City Councilman David Alvarez.

Among those singled out for praise were Camarillo and Talamantez, who helped occupy the land and block the bulldozers on April 22, 1970. They’ve stayed involved with the park — Camarillo as chair of its all-volunteer steering committee, Talamantez as the one pursuing placement in the National Register.

It took her 14 years.

She researched and documented the 7.4-acre park’s role in the wider Chicano civil rights movement, as well as the cultural and artistic importance of the murals.

“These murals were intended as a way to commemorate the struggle to reclaim the park for the neighborhood, and they represent exceptionally significant works of public art that transformed the gray concrete support pillars into a public gathering space filled with color and imagery,” according to the formal application, which ran more than 150 pages.

Talamantez, whose family has lived in Barrio Logan for more than 100 years, also had to convince the community that this stamp of approval was worth getting. “There’s a lack of trust in government,” she said.

That’s in part because the community was turned literally into a dumping ground in the 1950s, when rezoning brought in auto-wreckers and plating companies. By the time the bridge opened in 1969, some 1,500 families had been displaced by the road construction.

Even though Talamantez has worked for government herself, most recently as a senior manager for the California Arts Council in Sacramento, she, too, is wary. Which is why she wanted the historic-place designation for the park.

“With all the gentrification that’s going on, I was afraid that someday they’d come in and just see this as a big parking lot and wipe out the murals and the history that is here,” she said. “I knew that would not be a good thing.”

Friday’s celebration included a standing ovation from the community members and activists. Amid the applause, Salvador Torres shouted, “Viva Chicano Park!”

He was there in the beginning, too, suggesting within days of the occupation that the giant T-shaped pillars holding up the bridge ramps be covered with art. He helped paint several of the murals, which are a swirling mix of history and legend, of politics and poetry, of struggles and triumph.

There are depictions of farmworkers, Mayan ruins, Mexican revolutionaries. “Our history must be told,” reads the writing on one mural. And now, Torres said, it always will be. “How can you forget it?” he asked.

Restoration of about two dozen of the murals, damaged over the decades by the vibrations of cars overhead, was completed last year with the help of a $1.6 million federal grant. Because paints and sealants have improved since the 1970s, the murals seem especially vibrant now.